eBay the Easy Way!
By Jonathan R Taylor
Last week, I picked up a copy of Entrepreneur’s eBay Startup Guide magazine. It’s filled with helpful articles for those interested in starting their own successful Ebay business. The guide gives great step-by-step advice for determining what to list, the right tools for the job, and the best way to sell your merchandise. eBay has created some incredible stories of entrepreneurs like Michael Lehman and Randy Smythe, who started selling DVDs exclusively on eBay. Last year, their revenue totaled $3.6 million and they expect to hit $7 million by the end of this year.
Nancy and Daren Baughman of Cary, North Carolina, decided to use eBay as a means of clearing out a few things in their attic. Those items sold at such a nice profit that they continued selling until they decided to start their own eBay business two years ago. They spend time hunting garage sales and auction houses for collectibles, art, antiques, and electronic equipment. They have also started helping others appraise and sell their items on eBay in exchange for a percentage of each deal. Their company, eBizAuctions, will exceed $100,000 in sales for this year alone. Other business owners have used eBay to help compensate for the loss of sales in their local brick and mortar stores. David Hardin, a shoe wholesaler in Mayfield, Kentucky, started listing his shoes on eBay in 2000 as a means to supplement his loss in local business. Four years later, his brick and mortar store is thriving again along with his five-eBay apparel businesses. His gross sales last year were about $750,000.
Currently, there are 430,000 full and part time entrepreneurs earning incomes on eBay. With some research and planning, anyone can create a profitable business with very little financial risk up front. I recommend picking up this eBay guide at your local bookstore. Even if you have no interest in building a full time business, it's a great way to get rid of a lot of old junk in the garage or attic.
About the Author
Jonathan Taylor, specializes in helping people in every stage of their lives to find more meaning and purpose in their work. He believes that to find that purpose and meaning, a person's interests, skills, passions, and goals must integrate seamlessly with their work. To get more great advice, subscribe to Jonathan's newsletter at www.careercalling.com!
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What Everyone Should Know About How To Buy Wholesale
By: Melanie Burns
Finding a supplier for the product you want to sell, at a price that you can profit from, can be a big task. The best suppliers for your online sales or auctions do not advertise their services and often cannot be found online.
Those that you can find online tend to be middle-men. It is often difficult to get a good enough price to make any real profit online.
Let me tell you about my simple 2 step system to find an untapped source for wholesale suppliers. This is so simple that it's often overlooked as a source for product. This system involves thinking outside the box and not letting policy stop you. (continued below)
The First Step to find a supplier is to find someone that already sells or has access to what you want to sell. This could be a website, an eBay seller, a manufacturer, a wholesale outlet, or a regular store in your city. This is the easy step. You know what you are looking for and you can search on the internet, not for a wholesale source, but for anyone already selling what you want to sell.
Another valuable source for a local supplier is your local phone book. The yellow pages are the best way to find local sources. This should be the first place you look. Doing business locally with someone that you can meet face to face is a big plus for your business.
Another potential source for your product is to find a distributor who would be willing to private label a product for you. You could get a very high quality product for a much lower price than if it had the name brand label.
The Second and Key Step is to convince the source you found to become your supplier.
Manufacturers and wholesale sources often have minimum orders that might be beyond your reach if you are just starting out. Online retailers, eBay merchants, and retail stores may be your best bet. Try to find a small store who is looking to expand.
But remember, you are dealing with a human being and they can be convinced to do business with you. Just be sure to sweeten the deal for them. One way is to offer the person you are dealing with at your new found source, a percentage of your profits from the products he supplies you.
Be sure to project it out for him. If he can see the benefit of working with you even though it causes extra work for him, you can be successful in making a deal.
You could offer him 20% of the profit from sales of his products. For example you could show him that you project to make at least $100 profit from each product, and you expect to sell 40 of them per month. The $4000 a month means an extra $800 per month in his pocket. You still make a nice $3200 profit for the month in this example.
On top of that, he will be ordering more products from his supplier and may be eligible for a higher price break from them. This way, his reward for the effort to work with you, is making money on both sides.
There are many benefits you can offer your potential supplier, but no matter how you look at it, the main thing it comes down to is MONEY. What's in it for your potential supplier to do business with you? If can you show him that, you have a better chance of making a deal with him and starting your online sales.
NOTE: When looking for suppliers around your city, don't go trying to impress the big stores with your $800 or even $3,000 extra income per month proposal. Try going to the little stores that are looking to expand their business, they are the ones that are usually more open to new opportunities.
The big stores are making hundreds of thousands of dollars per month in profits, so an extra couple of thousand would probably not impress them the least bit.
So now you see that by thinking outside the box, you open the door to many possibilities and increase your ability to make money online with your products.
About the Author:
Copyright © Melanie Burns
This article is free for reproduction but must be reproducted in its entirety including live links and this copyright statement. Subscribe to the iBusiness How2 Newsletter to receive hot tips, how to's, internet business tools, and relevant product reviews by sending an email to: newsletter@internet-business-how-to.com
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